The Windows Server group is your premier resource for objective technical discussion and peer-to-peer support on the Microsoft Windows Server family of products including Windows Server 2003, IIS Server, ISA Server, and SMS Server.

Control Alt Delete 'Secure Log On Screen' Is Not Coming Up

On one of my user's desktop "secure log on screen" is not coming. It is windows 7 Pro and domain joined. He is having local admin rights. When It is set in local group policy, it stays till next reboot. Rest all computers in domain are OK. Any help wil be highly appreciated.

Popular White Paper On This Topic

Is this a new computer that has never worked, or was it working and stopped? What does come up, the home style login screen? If it is a new computer, did you allow AD to create the account, or did you manually create the computer account?

If you can make it come up by setting it in local policy but it disappears after a reboot, it sounds like you've got a group policy applied to the computer that is overwriting it. If you manually created the computer's account in AD, check for another account. I know I had a server that wasn't acting as I expected it to once, and it turned out that I created the account manually in AD with a name like my-svr-1, but when I set up the server I named it something like my-srv-1. Because I named it SRV rather than SVR, AD just created an account for it and shoved it in the new computers container, thus not applying the group policy that I expected it to.

Good luck, but bear in mind the more information you give us about the situation the more likely we are to be able to help.

This is an old working Win 7. Everything was OK till now. No changes have
made in GP /AD. When the user locks /restarts, the user log in screen
appears instead of "Press ctrl + alt + Del to log in " Yes! I too think it
is applying the settings from AD. Because after making a change in local GP
it becomes OK during first boot. There after it changes the state.

Check your group policy
Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options.
In the right pane, double click on Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL.
Select and set the radio button of Disabled.

I'm assuming that this computer is not in an OU by itself. Correct? If not, make sure you move it into the same OU as the rest of the computers, or look very closely at the GPs attached to the OU that it is in. Run a Resulting Set Of Policies (RSOP) analysis on the machine. In 2008, it is all the way at the bottom of the navigation tree on the left hand side of the Group Policy Management Console, and here are good instructions for 2003 -> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778580(v=ws.10).aspx

If the computer is in the same OU as all of the other computers and you don't see anything in GP, I would then try disjoining and rejoining the computer to the domain. MAKE SURE YOU RESET THE LOCAL ADMIN PASSWORD FIRST. Even if you think you know it, take my advice and reset the local administrator password on the machine before disjoining the computer. I've been burned more times than I care to admit by that one and I hate for your next post to be "How do I recover the local admin password?"